Droplet upgrading 14.04 -> 15.10 -> 16.04 -> 16.10 -> 17.04 etc?

June 17, 2016 2.4k views
Server Optimization Ubuntu 16.04
jradxl
By:
jradxl

Although I’ve successfullying upgraded the same Ubuntu droplet in the past two years and just got 16.04 working, I needed to get support to reset the networking.

That gave rise to some comments to the advantages/disadvantages of a kernel provided by the “do-release-upgrade” (term used was a hypervisor managed kernel) and those provided by DigitalOcean via the control panel (term used was a managed kernel).

I don’t understand!
Please can someone explain.

Am I unusual in having used “do-release-upgrade”?

Do most clients of DigitalOcean use the kernel provided when the droplet is created and only keep the security updated. Then create a new droplet when a new Ubuntu version is released and migrate all programs and data over?

Thanks
John

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1 Answer
sierracircle June 17, 2016

There are probably some advantages/disadvantages to either way; however, sticking with LTS (12.04, 14.04, 16.04…) is a good start, since they each have 5 years of support.

for my servers, I prefer to stick with an LTS for most of its life, and just start with a clean slate when it is time to upgrade. This sort of forces me to think through what I am using/not using, and clean up scripts, old user accounts, ssh keys, etc.

Having said that…I have been running the same install of Ubuntu on my desktop now for many years because I have been too lazy to wipe it clean, and I just keep upgrading to the next release…

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